How would I describe today's GUIs? A mess. -- A mess that grew as new features were needed, with lack of proper design, with a desire to keep backward compatibility, and with tools from the past trying to achieve future needs. I propose a new design philosophy for GUIs. We'll call it Vermaden's GUI. Note: This is the latest entry in our 2008 article contest.

I was with you until you put MS in the same category as Apple in-terms of UI consistency. There too many applications to list here that have major issues with consistency and look nothing like each other. So for a linux newb to ask why does everything look different is kind of ironic.